the nightmare before portal
by izfan26
Summary: Jack wakes up in aperture and has to help a congregation of misphits to escape. but will he end up saving a strange woman who no one recognizes? why is she muttering about cake and lemons? and what is her connection to the powermad A.I. in charge of the show? post-NBC, post-P0rtal, human bots, Chelley. rated because, you know, p0rtal
1. the moron

Blackness.

All alone.

Jack's skull was killing him. A dull, pounding throb buried deep in his marrow. He remembered… he was out in the graveyard with Zero… and then he started barking… a stinging pinch in the back of his neck and a female voice saying "gotcha,"…. And then he felt himself being dragged away.

Jack fell hard on a flat surface. Forcing his eyelids open, he sat up and looked around. He was in some kind of glass cage in a pure, white room. In the cage, a door was directly in front of him. No locks, no knobs for that matter. In the room, a door sat in the right corner. It showed the blue figure of a person running. In the cage was a pod-like bed, a toilet, a radio playing some kind of jazz, and a clipboard. He grabbed the board in his skeletal hand. Nothing important.

Wait… what in the name of shrieking spiders was he _wearing?!_ An orange jumpsuit was slightly unzipped on his chest, his legs encased in some kind of brace-boots. Unzipping the jumpsuit a bit more, he realized he was wearing a white shirt with lettering. It said "Aperture Laboratories." Now that he thought of it… Jack quickly re-zipped it, and noticed the same white words were stenciled next to a weird circle-typed spiral. Checking his boots, he noticed the white metal said the same thing in black, and vice versa for the brace part.

"Where am I?" he asked no one.

As if answer, a pleasant female voice from above said, "hello, and welcome again to the Aperture Science Enrichment Center. We hope your brief detention in the relaxation vault has been a pleasant one. Your specimen has been processed, and we are now happy to say that we are ready to begin testing."

"Testing?" said Jack. "Testing for what? Who are you anyway? Where am I? Why did you bring me here?"

"You may not want to ask so many questions."

"And why shouldn't I? What, exactly, is your threat to shut me up?"

"Well, for starters, I could surgically remove your vocal cords." Several robotic arms descended from the ceiling, displaying several odd-looking surgical tools. "I did that once. She's still around. Maybe you'll run into her. After all, the testing tracks are all linked together.

"Enough chit-chat. The portal will open in 3… 2… 1."

In the white doorway, an orange circle appeared. In the room, there was a blue circle, in which Jack could see himself, clear as day, staring uncertainly into the portal. Taking a leap of faith, the pumpkin king propelled himself into the unknown.

The door in the right corner opened, revealing a comically large red button and a tube containing a strange block.

The door was closed, and a blue trail of dots led from it to the button. Another man was there, staring at the block-which had now fallen out of the tube and onto the floor. He was not in the jumpsuit Jack was, but in a white button-up shirt, blue tie, khaki trousers, and brown loafers. He ruffled a hand through his red hair, squinting through glasses with one cracked lens. "Hrrmmm… let's see…" he was muttering. "We've got a button. Got a box. Now… what to do with button and box…? Maybe…" he stepped on the button with a foot, and noticed the open door. "Ah! Yes! Yes, I did it! I did i- oh. Hm. Disappointing, really." He had tried to run for the door, but, unsurprisingly, it had closed.

Jack let out a snort of laughter. The man jumped. "YAA! Oh. 'Ello, mate. Just, ah, solving this test. For Her. Yeah, She wants me to solve it. Been at it for hours, rather complicated. What with buttons, trick doors, random cubes are involved… 'S'got it all. Got it all, absolutely torturous."

If Jack weren't a skeleton, and had eyes, he would've been rolling them. "Look, just put the cube on the button. Not that difficult."

"Huh? Really? You think it's that simple?"

"Almost certain. Uh… actually, yeah, I'm really certain."

Taking his advice, the bumbling giant took the cube in his arms, walked a few steps, and dropped it on the button. "Huh! Wouldja look at that! Amazing, mate, you're some kinda bloody genius! Oh, uh, sorry, didn't catch your name. Mine's Wheatley, by the way. Dr. Brian Wheatley, though most call me Wheatley, bit 'o culture there. Anyway, your name?" he stuck a hand out in Jack's direction.

Jack, feeling dizzy, took the hand offered and shook it. "Jack."

"Ah! Man of few words, I take it! So's my wife, y'know, cut out her vocal cords, she sassed back a lot. Yeah, trying to find her, got stuck here, been here for hours. So, ah, y'wanna go from here together? You, Chell and I can all escape together! Already got a plan! Whaddya say?"

"I'd say no." intoned the woman. "Why don't you two just do the tests? Trust me, it's a better plan than whatever asinine thing the moron came up with."

Wheatley's expression of joy at seeing someone else alive (Well not really alive, more like a zombie, 'cept this bloke didn't wanna eat his brain. More like… well, undead. No, alive. Dead-live. Sure, let's go with that.) To one of fury at the insult of his intelligence. "I AM **NOT!**_** A! **__**MORON!**_ Just- just c'mon, this way." He sneered, seizing Jack's wrist.

The two men piled into the elevator, and descended into the bowels of aperture.


	2. the mute lunatic

In the elevator, Wheatley's face considerably softened. "So, old Turret boy knocked you out and dragged you here, huh?"

"Yeah, that's pretty much it. "Sighed Jack, leaning against the side of the elevator, cracking his neck. That pod he'd been asleep in _had not_ been designed to accommodate someone of his height.

"Oh, that's right." Said GLaDOS from above their heads. "I had to cram you into that thing like a sardine. Next time, try not to be so tall. Terribly inconvenient." Jack flipped the ceiling the bird. "Anyway, this next test involves deadly lasers. Maybe you'll even run into that mute lunatic you were so unfortunate to marry, Wheatley."

"You mean Chell? Where is she? What have you done with my wife?!"

"Now, now," she crooned. "Your murderous wife is perfectly fine. I would hope she'd be just as worried about you."

With this, the elevator door opened, and Jack and Wheatley descended down the long hallway.

In the doorway the two men were immediately pulled to the side and beneath a beam of red light.

A tall, dark-haired woman gazed at them with sunken gray eyes. She was in the same jumpsuit as Jack, down to the boots. Her face lit up upon seeing Wheatley. "Luv!" choked her husband, and the two embraced. Pulling her away, Wheatley asked, "Where's the others, Chell? Where's your mum?"

The woman shook her head, indicating that she did not know, and that they had bigger problems.

"Who's there?" asked a high-pitched feminine voice that turned Jack's marrow to ice. It was the last noise he'd heard in the graveyard. Chell frowned at him, and motioned in the direction the voice had come, then pointed at him.

"Yeah." He replied in answer. "One of them kidnapped me." With a jolt, he realized he'd understood Chell's crude sign language, and immediately responded to it. "Uh, so, how do we get passed these guys?"

"Mostly, we turn 'em off." Replied Wheatley. "Knock 'em over, emancipate 'em, pop a portal above and below 'em, stuff like that. But we gotta get behind 'em, 'cause they shoot at y-"

"I'll get rid of them." Said Jack, immediately standing up.

"What?! NO! Don't be daft, man! They're robotic _guns_, for god's sake!"

"I'll be fine. I don't have to worry about bullets.

Jack had run out into the firing line of the turrets. They began to intone their comments: "I see you." "There you are." "Gotcha." (That last one made jack hesitate for a second… just a second.)

This is the part where I tell you that Jack is dead and his body is perforated with bullets. Right?

No.

Jack was much like a cross between a spider and a snake than a man. Despite the 2% more bullet coming at him, Jack dodged, rolled, jumped, and flew around the turrets, knocking them over in the process. They shot at machine gun speed, then said their "shutting down" phrase ("goodnight," "crit-i-cal error," "I don't blame you,")

For the final turret, who was still intoning, "Are you still there?" Jack dove down into it, splitting it clean in half. Bullets spilled around on the floor, like a bead necklace unraveling. It had nothing to say. How could it?

Jack smirked at his companions' shocked faces. "And that's why I don't have to worry about bullets.


	3. curiosity, knowledge, facts and space

"For this next test, you'll each need the aperture science handheld portal device. Here you go." The panel above the trio's heads opened, and two devices matching Chell's tumbled out. Jack and Wheatley each picked one up, and headed through the door. "The aperture science computer aided enrichment center always promises to provide useful advice. For instance, the floor here will kill you. Try to avoid it. Good luck!"

There were eight portal surfaces, and one was at an incline. Four people, a woman (in a blue dress that looked to be from the seventies that fell to her knees, matching blue flats, with hair a matching shade of blue in a white headband), a man(pink hair, dressed in a white lab coat, pink sweater vest, magenta corduroys and loafers) , a girl (bronze dress and matching shoes that resembled the woman's, and bronze hair in a ponytail) and a boy (messy blonde hair, red t-shirt, blue jeans, and black sneakers), were standing on the starting platform. They each held portal guns. The man and woman seemed to be arguing, and the boy and the girl seemed lost in conversation.

"But force equals mass times acceleration, Craig."

"Knowledge, it is fact that if you jump off this ledge, the likelihood of you dying and leaving me widowed with two children is 87.1%."

"Fly! Fly! Wanna fly! Fly-flying means launching. Wanna launch. Launch into space! Gonna go to space. Better by a telescope. Wanna see me? Buy a telescope." Said the little boy, who looked about ten, pulling on his father's hand.

"Mommy, what's this do?" asked the girl, roughly six, turning her portal gun upside down and trying to peer into it.

"Curiosity, don't do that." Said Knowledge, i.e. Mommy, snatching it away.

"Ahm… excuse me," said Jack tentatively. "Do you folks need some help?"

"Yes," the family replied in unison. Then Craig blinked and said, "The likelihood of a skeleton being animate and not trying to kill everyone and everything is-"

"Yeah, yeah, see something new every day, don't'cha?

Jack aimed a blue portal at the platform below, then an orange one at the next one in line. "Your wife's right, er, Craig, is it? This is a simple puzzle, involving velocity conserved between portals. Watch," and Jack jumped down through his gate connected through space ("SPAAAAACCCCCCCCE!") then a blue one at the next platform, an orange one after passing through that one, and so on.

"See?" he called back across. "Nothing to it!"

"Fact: Stephanie will go first."

Once everyone was across, Jack asked the family how they'd gotten here.

"We were on our family picnic that we go on once a month, when Curiosity went to chase after a butterfly. Her brother, Spacey, went and chased off after her. We thought nothing of it, we figured that they'd come back when they were hungry, and anyway, they were in earshot." Began Knowledge.

"Then, I couldn't hear them anymore and, fact: I got worried, so I ran in the direction they'd been heading, and I brought Stephanie with me. We came across this old shack, and assumed they'd gone in it." Craig continued.

"It was sooooooo easy to lure them here." Interrupted Glados. "The little girl is incredibly stupid. 'Ooohh, what's in heeeere?' all I had to do was grab her. Then you three came plunging in after her. Like shooting fish in a barrel."

"Fact: you will not speak of my family in that insulting manner or I will murder until you die."

Twelve turrets and at least nine lasers appeared in front of Craig. He squealed, "HYEEEEK!" and lunged into Jack's arms.

"You will _not_ threaten me," growled Glados. Up until this point, she had only spoken in the irritatingly pleasant voice that she used when she woke up Jack. Now, it seemed more of a lion's growl, almost inhuman. Which, Jack reminded himself, she probably wasn't. It sent icicles up Jack's spine.

Then, as quickly as they had appeared, the turrets and lasers were gone. Then, just as quickly, Glados's voice returned to normal. "Let's move onto the next test chamber, shall we?


	4. the rat and the secretary

A bloodcurdling scream erupted from the other side of the door. All five members of the party clapped their hands to their ears (or, in Jack's case, either side of his skull). All that could be told of it was that it was female.

"What was that?" asked Curiosity.

"Lady is loud." Muttered Spacey. "Want her quiet. Quiet. Quiet in space. Sound- sound doesn't carry in space. Space. Wanna go to space."

"It's just vermin." Said Glados nonchalantly. "You'll find a lot of it around here. The female is someone very close to me. She is like a sister to me. We are practically the same person." The last words were practically a purr. _Maybe she really is part lion_, thought Jack.

When the doors opened, a man and a woman were wrestling inside. The man had wrapped a white, ragged lab coat around her, and was trying to keep her as still as possible. The woman thrashed and screamed things that made no sense.

"_Cave! I don't want this! Listen to me! Cave, I do not want this! The cake is a lie! She's not me and I'm not her! I don't want your damn lemons! No! No! No, no, no, Shut up, Shut up, Shut up!_" her matted mane of brown hair flew wildly and her eyes darted around. She seemed to be having some sort of schizophrenia or paranoia fit.

"Stay with me, Caroline! C'mon, you gotta stay with me now!" grunted the man, yanking on the sleeves where her arms were currently trapped. His black hair and beard were just as matted as Caroline's, his skin pasty and eyes sunken.

Jack marched over and pinched a vein on the woman's neck. She gasped, shuddered, and then fell limp. A few seconds passed, and then she slowly stirred, and her eyes fluttered open.

"I … goodness, I dropped the cube. Silly me." She unraveled herself from the lab coat, then looked over at the group. Her eyes grew wide when she saw Chell. "La mia bambina!" she screeched, enveloping the silent woman in her arms. For the first time since he'd met her, Jack saw a tearful smile grace Chell's face.

"Eugh, human affection," moaned Glados, sounding sickened. "Look, I'll give you another cube. Just please, _please_ stop that." The weighted cube dropped from the ceiling.

"This is your mother?" Jack asked Chell. She nodded.

"This is Doug. Doug Rattmann." Said Caroline, waving to the man who had been restraining her. She studied Jack for a minute before adding, "You seem familiar."

"What do yo-" before Jack could finish his sentence, he started a violent fit of coughing. His ribs ached, soon he found himself on all fours, coughing, hacking, and wheezing. He felt hands hammering on his back as he was unable to stop himself.

"Why are you coughing?"

"Space!"

"You are probably about to die."

"Shut up, Craig."

After a few more minutes of gasping and hacking, Jack managed to get back up. He glanced over the group, and noticed no one looked more surprised than Caroline. "What?" he managed.

Before Caroline could respond, Chell had placed the cube on the button and herded them all out.

Once they were in the elevator, Jack tried again. "What was that?" he asked Caroline.

"Nothing."

"_Some_thing."

Caroline was silent for a while, before saying, "Mr. Johnson."

"Huh?"

"Mr. Johnson, I don't want this… sir," she added, almost sheepishly.

"I- I'm sorry, Caroline, you must be mistaking me with someone else. My name is Jack, remember? Jack Skellington. I don't even know anyone named Johnson." Again, Caroline was silent. Then she began to sob quietly. Immediately, Jack's skeletal arm was around her shoulders. "Don't cry, what's wrong? Who was Mr. Johnson?"

"He was the head of Aperture Science." Doug cut in. "her husband, Chell's father. He died, sometime in the nineteen-eighties. Chell was… how old were you?" he asked Chell. "Nine months? Ten?"

"Sixteen," said Caroline, "and it was about that time that Cave's last wishes were put into effect. Those monsters hooked me up to her," she nodded upward "and extracted every vile, sick, twisted, evil thought I'd had in my life. These thoughts were put into her brain and multiplied by three, with one percent morality. I still have the visions sometimes... anyway, my baby was put in cryogenic storage, and she still aged, mind you, just more slowly. She should be thirty-two. At least. And now, she's roughly nineteen. I've been wandering around, testing, and having episodes, for the past thirty-two years. The only reason I haven't killed myself by now is that she won't let me age or die. That's why I don't look a day over thirty-two."

Jack did not know this man.

He had not heard this man's name before today.

Then why did he feel immense guilt at Caroline's story, as though he were responsible?


	5. glorified storage crates

Jack stared intently at the glorified storage crate in front of him. It looked pretty much like the other cubes, except this one was covered in pink hearts. Glados had called it a "companion cube." Apparently, he and his fellow subjects were supposed to become friends with them. Everyone- except Caroline and Doug, who already had cubes that they carried strapped to their backs- had been given one and had been given the same instructions.

Wheatley sat on his cube. "So, uh…" he said awkwardly to it, "d'you come here often?"

Chell glared at him and used the antigravity attachment in her portal gun to lift her cube. Everyone followed suit. They followed the corridor, and heard talking and growling.

"So, what do you think's the solution, honey-cakes?"

"GRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrRRRRgg."

"Yeah, I see what you mean, but then this thing'll get rid of my portal."

The two were a man and a woman. Again. The man was wearing a green t-shirt, black jeans, green sneakers, a black vest, and a black fedora. His messy green hair hung in his eyes, which were startlingly green with rectangular pupils.

As for the woman… at first glance, she looked like a stripper. She was wearing a red dress and red stilettoes. The dress was skimpy (and we're talking _very_ skimpy), low-cut, and barely came halfway down her thighs. Her legs were covered in torn fish-nets. Her fluorescent red hair was cut to her jaw, and her eyes were straight red. When she spoke, her voice was a deep, rumbling growl, which she let loose, pointing at the group.

The man turned away from the material emancipation grid to look at the woman's find. He cracked a friendly, good natured smile. "Oh, hey there, inmates. Name's Rick. This here's Anger." He waved nonchalantly at the woman. "You got one of these damn things too, huh?" he nodded at the stacked cubes in the corner.

"You should hang onto them," said Doug seriously. "Save your life one day. Though, due to the fact you're here, your life can't mean much."

It happened in a flash. In a few moments, Doug was on the floor, Anger's knee in his chest and her red-taloned hand touching his Adam's apple. She was growling what appeared to be a stream of defenses for Rick. Rick seized her by the shoulders, yelling, "easy, beautiful, easy!

"we got engaged about three months ago," He explained to Jack. "she can get kinda defensive. But, hey, what fine lady wouldn't? I mean-" he flexed his left bicep, "-what could people have to hate on?"

Jack didn't listen. He was too busy solving the test. After a few minutes, he placed his cube (which he had named "Cubie") on the button.

"the aperture science enrichment center would like to inform you that the emancipation grid in this test chamber is broken. Don't. Take anything. With you."

Jack placed a portal on the inside of the door, then one on the outside. He picked up Cubie then motioned for the group to follow.

"I knew it," muttered the evil, power-mad A.I.

Jack flipped it the bird. "OK, this group can_not_ get bigger. I think I might be able to break us out of here in the next chamber."

The twelve- count them, twelve- people, and their cubes, nodded. Well, the cubes didn't- but- you understand.

Anyway, in the very next chamber, Jack found just the window he needed. Or, rather, just the air vent he needed.


	6. screwing,sliding,screaming,shooting

"Please tell me one of you guys was the maintenance guy at this place." Jack muttered to Doug and Wheatley, eyeing the loose screws on the air vent.

"Doug sort of was," said Wheatley, waving to him nonchalantly. "Whenever we needed something done, we called Doug. He'd've never left the testing though."

"Eh, I tightened some bolts." Doug said shyly, pulling a screwdriver out of his lab coat pocket.

"Good enough," muttered Jack, waving him over and helping Doug onto his shoulders. "C'mon, c'mon!"

"_**You may regret what you are about to do**_," intoned Glados.

Of all the voices Jack had heard out of Glados, this was the most robotic. It spoke with the air of one who was unable to, and most likely did not want to, feel emotions of any sort. The voice was loud and left a hollow ringing sound when it had left with its warning.

"Done!" cried Doug, climbing down from Jack's shoulders and waving to Chell and Caroline. The second Chell was up, they started on Caroline.

"_**I'm warning you**_," droned Glados, causing some panels to slide open as they hoisted up Curiosity, "_**stop**_ _**and please do the test**_."

Turrets slid out, their lights still dim. Jack swallowed and hurried in the process of lifting Spacey as Doug assisted Knowledge.

"_**This is your last chance**_." The turrets lights blinked red, and their lasers searched, intoning their catchphrases in their cute voices. "_**Or I WILL kill you**_."

Jack hoisted Doug's foot upward, and there was a sudden yell of pain and a spout of blood splattered Jack's jumpsuit. Throwing his friend's foot upward, Jack climbed up himself, barely missing eight or nine bullets.

The air vent opened into a wide corridor, much like the ones that lead to and from test chambers. Except this one led god-knows-where, and it was out of reach of her cameras, neurotoxin, and turrets. Doug was doubled over, hands clamped over the bullet wound on his calf. "My leg," he hissed, "really, really hurts,"

_Ya don't say?_ Jack wanted to say. Instead he said, "How bad?"

"Pretty bad."

Jack sighed and heaved Doug onto his shoulders, as his companion cube was occupying the zero-grav portion of his portal gun.

A mashie-spike-plate hurtled at the group from above, but they managed to portal away just in time.

Then a laser was placed just high enough to slice at their necks. If you want to call it a laser, that's fine by me. Our heroes called it an "extreme limbo-stick."

The facility's walls were crashing down onto them. Curiosity, Spacy, and Wheatley screamed.

It was Jack who noticed it.

A small gap in the wall. A panel was missing. Just big enough for them to squeeze through.

"Come on!" he screamed over the noise, waving his companions over. He carried Doug over and threw him in, and helped everyone in, then pulled the panel back in place.

They were in a room, covered in writing and drawings. The companion cube was pasted over the faces of random pictures, and strange things were scrawled on the wall, like "the cube does speak," "I'm not hallucinating, you are," and "the cake is a lie." And in the center, a mural of Chell. She appeared to be asleep, and her hair fell in soft, midnight-colored tendrils. Under the mural was scrawled, "Both alive and dead until someone opens the box."

"One of my dens," murmured Doug, leaning into Jack's shoulder. His skin was growing even whiter and the rose around his wound was blossoming even larger.

"Is there anywhere we could rest?"

"There's a meeting room a few yards from here," said Wheatley. "I was there when it… happened. 'Round nineteen, I think. We can rest, and Doug can get patched up. There might still be some lab coats there, we can use that as linen."

Everyone seemed to approve of that idea. Jack, however, was slightly hesitant. "And you're SURE she can't touch us back here?"

"If she could, wouldn't we be swimming in neurotoxin by now?"

"Good point." And with that, Dr. Brian Wheatley led them down the halls of aperture.

Jack and Caroline supported Doug near the front. "So, uhm… was cave a… good husband?"

Caroline snorted. "Are you serious? When I told him I was pregnant, he threatened to fire me if I didn't terminate the pregnancy."

"Did he?"

"No. I was the backbone of this place. That, and he needed me for the experiment." Chell made a snorting noise from the rear of the group. "Cara Mia, don't act like that; I'm sure if he met you, he'd have loved you as much as I do."

Chell repeated herself.


	7. a tender moment

Craig, Anger, and Rick volunteered to venture out of their hidey-hole for food. Meanwhile, Jack, Chell, Caroline, Knowledge, and Wheatley tended to the wounded.

"So, what is it about space that fascinates you so much?" Wheatley asked Spacy, as he stemmed the flow of blood from the cut by the boy's eye.

"Guess. Guessguessguessguess."

"Uuuuhhh-"

"SPACE!" The child cried, causing Wheatley to jump.

Doug lay on one of the tables, as Chell held the leg still, and Caroline gripped his shoulders. A large chunk of meat was missing, and something white was exposed. I won't discuss the details of Jack stitching the wound, but much screaming took place.

After a few hours, Jack went over to the corner in which Caroline had taken shelter. His skeletal arm laced around her shoulder. "Caroline?"

"Yes?"

He sighed. "How did Mr. Johnson… die?"

She frowned. "Shouldn't you know? I mean, you're the king of death or something, don't you know, like, all the deaths that ever happened?"

"Pumpkin King. And yes, I do, but there's something about Cave Johnson's death that was sort of whited out. I mean, if I try hard enough, I can hear a lot of coughing, and a woman screaming, but not much else. Can you, maybe…"

"Fill in some of the blanks?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry, Jack, I… I just can't do that. It'd be too painful."

"He threatened your job if you didn't kill his child!"

"I know, and I know I should hate him, and I try to, I really do, but… I don't know… I miss him, I guess. I think part of me might still love him."

"You're insane."

"You're just _now_ figuring this out?"

Before Jack could retaliate, Rick burst into the room. Everyone, except Doug, who was still unconscious. "you guys gotta come quick!" he gasped, red-faced and excited.

"what did you find?" asked Curiosity, whose mother was setting her wrist.

"c'mon, c'mon, I can't- ya gotta come see!"

Knowledge grabbed for her daughter to apply a fifth coat of linen, but the child escaped with Rick. She ran after them, and Chell, Wheatley, and Spacey followed after. Jack looked at Caroline. Caroline looked at Jack. Jack scooped up the unconscious Doug in his arms, and ran after his friends.


	8. cake and the Cave Core

The room Rick, Craig and Anger had found a room filled with cake. Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of black forest cakes, all on shelves, all in neat rows, and all still warm and good-smelling.

"Cake! Cake! In space! Space cake!" cried Spacey, jumping up and down and gripping his father's hand. His sister was following suit, only holding her mother's hand. The children broke free of their parents' grasps, and lunged for the nearest cakes-

-only to have their collars grabbed by Jack. "How do we know this isn't a trap? Don't you kids read creepypastas?!" he scolded over their complaints. "No, someone should taste one first…"

Almost everyone volunteered at once. They were terribly hungry.

Jack strode forward, plucked a cherry off one of the cakes, and popped it in his mouth. At least the poison wouldn't affect him. He stood for a few seconds, then chose to fall over backwards.

A collective gasp irradiated from the group. Jack then opened his eyes, and grinned. "It's delicious. Who wants a cake?"

The prank was soon forgotten in the wake of much chewing and eating of cake.

Several hours later, Jack and Caroline sat curled in a corner. She still held a cake in her lap. Craig had wrapped his family in his lab coat, and they slept on the most comfortable piece of floor they could find. Wheatley and Chell lay in his own lab coat, curled up by their companion cube. Doug sat on his and Caroline's, his eyes wide and bugged out. Apparently, he'd taught himself to sleep with his eyes open, due to his insatiable paranoia.

Jack was just about to fall asleep, when he was called out to by an unfamiliar voice.

"Psst! Hey! Buddy! Up here!"

He looked upward to his left, and saw a personality core. Its eye was in the shape of a purple Aperture logo. "What do you want?" he asked it irritably.

"I'm Cave Johnson. I should be running this place, but some crazy computer was put into it instead. So now I need to get it out so Caroline can run the place."

"But she doesn't want that."

"How do you know what she wants?"

"Does the phrase, '_Mr. Johnson, I don't want this_,' ring a bell?"

"But Jack!" he didn't ask how it knew his name. He had a sneaking suspicion he knew. "You gotta help me! I'm practically your brother! I'm _you_!"

The last phrase, though expected, had stunned Jack. He gently lifted Caroline's head off his lap and set it on the floor. "I'm not you."

"Aren't you?" it asked calmly. Then a stream of memories hit him full-force. Cave Johnson playing with his first baseball. Cave Johnson getting beat up in high school. Cave Johnson founding Aperture. Cave Johnson arguing with his lovely wife about money and their daughter, whom he thought was getting in the way of science. Cave Johnson at his office in Aperture science making his last demand. Cave Johnson blacking out and waking up in the doctor's laboratory in Halloweentown.

Jack gasped and stepped back from the core. "See?" it said, as though explaining something to a child. "You are me. You always have been, always will be. Now… how 'bout forcing Caroline into something she doesn't want for your past conscious, huh?"

But something felt wrong. Jack had seen the kind of things Cave had put into motion. Caroline aside, he made things for people that were dangerous, mutating, and at times, admitted he didn't know what he was doing, and even kidnapped, injured, and even killed people. No. this creature was not him. Jack and Cave were two different people. He wasn't this man. He couldn't be. He didn't want to be.

"You can't deny it, Jack," Cave growled, annoyed. "Look at the Christmas incident. Your desire for death and fear lingers, even in your current life."

"No," Jack insisted, shaking his head and covering either side of his skull with his hands. His eyes were shut tightly. "_No_."

"You can't deny it!" Cave yelled. He was always irritated when someone didn't do what he wanted. "You want it too! You're me! It was your last request, buddy!"

"no. no. no!" Jack grabbed the maintenance handles on the chassis. "NO! I'M NOT YOU! _YOU'RE NOT ME AND I'M NOT YOU!"_

"_YES YOU ARE_!" Cave howled, spinning around in his Chassis.

"NO, I'M NOT!"

"YES YOU ARE!"

"No," Jack lifted his former concienceness over his head, "I'm," he amed for the material emancipation grid at the end of the long hall, "_**NOT!**_"

And he flung Cave Johnson with all his might. Unfortunately, he'd never been that good at throwing things, and Cave bounced off Rick's companion cube, sending it flying. It hurtled through the grid, turning a deep shade of black, and vaporizing.

But somehow, there was someone crouching in the ashes.


	9. thanks, Game Theory!

Jack raced over to the small, quivering, impossibly thin girl. She couldn't have been much older than nine or ten, and was clad in her best. A small blue dress, outlined in lace, torn and dirty. Her ankle-socks were missing most of their lace, and one of her blue suede Mary-Janes was missing. Her blonde, curly hair was matted, tangled and greasy.

With the help of Caroline, Jack managed to pry the girl out of her curled-up form and trickle some water down her throat (they had found multiple water bottles and working taps. She coughed, took them all in with wide, green eyes, and then broke into heavy, uncontrollable sobs. Vaguely, Jack wondered if her mind had snapped.

Knowledge wrapped the child in her arms. "Sweetie… do you want to tell me your name?"

"E-E-E-" she attempted to speak, but each time was interrupted by a hiccup. "Eve," she finally managed.

"Okay, Eve," Jack said in his best "Parent Voice," "where did you come from?"

Someone handed her a slice of cake, which she stared at for a moment as though unable to believe it real, then made sure no one was going to take it from her, and promptly began to swallow it down. "It's better if you chew it," said Jack. She nodded and did her best to slow down.

Between bites, she told her story. "Daddy took me to work and then-" munch. "I was working on my potato battery and-" bite. "and then a lady said something like, 'in-ish-ee-ate-ing-' and then she used a real, real big word-" she polished off the last bite and was promptly given another slice.. She turned to Wheatley and said, "You were watching me,"

Wheatley turned red. "Er- yeah, I was, wasn't I?"

"So you're a scientist, right?"

"That's right," he said, drawing himself up importantly.

"So you know big words?"

"Well, yeah, I know some big words."

"The lady was gonna put in some n-neur-Nero-"

"Neurotoxin?"

"Yeah. What's that?"

"Well, it's a gas that makes your nerves and stuff go wonky. If you inhale too much of it, you can- and probably will- die."

"Oh. 'Cos daddy made me run out real, real fast and then he went to sleep and then I went to sleep and then I woke up here."

Suddenly, Jack had a thought. "Hey, Anger, go get your cube." She pointed at the material emancipation grid and growled. "I know, that's the point! Go get it."

She did, and in seconds, Jack and Caroline were pulling apart a man. Eve shrieked. "Daddy!"

The man coughed and groaned. "Evie? Is that you baby?"

"Yeah, Daddy, I'm here, I'm here, look!"

His eyes didn't move. Didn't focus. "Eve? Where are you darling?"

Wheatley hankered over the man and peered into his eyes. "Blind," he announced. "Forgot to keep 'em closed, the poor bastard."

"Brian? You're here too?"

"Yeah, Mike, it's me. Listen, mate, what is it?"

He had to think about it. "1981." He finally answered.

Wheatley looked up sadly at Eve. "Mike," he murmured, "it's 2013. 1981 was 32 years ago, mate."

Mike groaned, then jumped, as if remembering something. "Project Glados," he gasped, grabbing Wheatley's tie. "Brian, I was an idiot, I shouldn't have turned it on, Brian, I should've waited for the morality core, I wanted to see it, I was impatient, I was stupid, I- Caroline, I was so sorry, I was arrogant and egotistical and monstrous, and-"

"shh." Said Caroline softly "it's ok. You were acting under orders. You were a scientist. I'm not mad at you. No one is. Chell," she added, suddenly addressing her daughter, "get Mike and Eve to the hideout. He's in no condition to fight Glados."

"actually, you guys can help." Said Jack suddenly. "Listen, I have a plan. I need you guys to follow me." He took Mike and Eve each by the hand, and led them to a place he wished didn't exist. The Cryogenic Storage unit.

He tossed each cube through the material emancipation grid, and gave them their instructions. "I want each of you to press one button next to a pod," he indicated the red "wake-up-subject" button next to each stasis pod, "then tell them to do the same. You got that?"

All nine people nodded. Tiny Eve was the first to activate a tall, dark man. He blinked a few times, then looked in the pod next to him, which contained a woman whose straight red hair fell to her jaw. He growled, then pounded the button next to her, breaking it in the process. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she looked around her than got the hint.

Jack watched as his plan unfolded, all the while, thinking, _this proves it. I'm not Cave. He'd never do this_.

Then a nasty little voice in his head said, _wouldn't he?_


	10. she's different

Remember before when Jack said that the group couldn't get any bigger?

Well, it did.

It got bigger. By thirty-thousand-plus people. Curiosity buzzed around and asked people questions. Craig stated incorrect facts and Knowledge corrected him. Spacey was annoying people, Chell and Caroline tended to wounds, Rick explained the plan, Anger growled, and Wheatley was generally irritating.

Somehow, Jack felt confident leading these people to take down Glados, even if they had been asleep for who knew how long. He knew each and every one of them wanted her dead, or at least no longer testing. They had been ripped away from their families, and most likely would never see them again. They all knew exactly who was to blame for that, and it wasn't scientific progress.

They decided to rest up before hunting for her chamber. Rick had lead off a group to take out her neurotoxin emitters and turret production line. Doug, Chell, and Wheatley each took turns on lookout duty (the last thing they wanted was to come this far and get taken out in their sleep).

Jack was half-asleep, when he heard a small metallic clang from around the corner. He immediately grabbed his modified portal gun (Doug had attached a turret's gun to each device, should the need for self-defence arise) and poked his head around.

A small girl, eight or nine, stood in the shadows. "Who's there?" he called. "Show yourself!"

She stepped out into the light of a dim, flickering, florescent bulb. She wore a white hoodie with a red dot in the center, white jeans, and a pair of knee-high boots. She removed her hood, revealing pale, almost white skin, covered in a spray of freckles. Her white hair fell to her jaw, and bangs hung in her face, almost covering her wide, red eyes. In her hand, she held what at first glance would appear to be a portal gun, but upon further inspection was an aperture science machine gun.

"I'm different," she muttered, looking at her feet, and jack shuddered. She had the same voice as a turret, and if she didn't look so frightened and harmless, she would have resembled one.

Stupidly he felt, Jack patted the spot next to him, and the child sat down. "Do you have a name?" she shook her head. "Do you want one?" she nodded. "Ok… what do you want to be called?"

"Prometheus was punished by the gods for giving the gift of knowledge to man. He was cast into the bowels of the earth and pecked by birds."

"Pardon?" the skeleton was thrown for a loop. "Do you want to be called Prometheus?" the girl nodded. "Well, that can't be a proper name for a little girl, can it? Wouldn't you prefer to be called something else?" she shrugged, so Jack started suggesting names that popped into his head.

"Melody?"

She nodded no.

"Joanna?"

Again, no.

Figuring she had seemed to like Greek myths, he tried some of those names. "Helen?" no. "Andromeda?" no. "Medea?" no. "Calypso? Penelope? Hera? Aphrodite?" no, no, no. Jack sighed, and clapped his hands to his head. He had to think outside the box… wait… box?

"How about Pandora?"

After thinking for several long minutes, the girl- Pandora- finally nodded.

"OK, Pandora." He would have asked where she came from, but assumed that he'd get another vague answer buried in a few sentences from another myth. Finally, he decided on asking yes or no questions only.

"Did you come from the surface?"

"Yes."

"Were you brought here with your consent?"

"No."

"Are you one of her turrets?"

She had to think about it. "no."

"What do you mean?"

She shrugged, and curled into Jack's lap. "I think I'm supposed to be. I was some new 'spearament. Daddy brought me here an' they gave me this," she nodded toward the gun. "but I didn't do what they wanted. I really tried. Guess I'm too different. I was gonna be in- incin- inciner-"

"incinerated?" asked Jack, hiding his shock and anger. He immediately remembered the experiment she meant. He had wanted to see if eight-year-olds would make good turrets. Add a sence of innocence to their impending death, you know? But Pandora had refused to kill anyone. So, she hadn't gone on to be downloaded into a turret, and Jack had ordered her incineration- no, _Cave_ had. Cave wouldn't pity this little girl. Jack did.

Her eyelids fluttered shut. "nap time," she crooned.

For the oddest reason, he didn't push her away. Instead, he pulled her into his arms and her head burrowed into his neck. "goodnight, Pandora." He said, then dropped off himself.


End file.
